You all know I am here in Atlanta at #BarkWorld to meet people, network, and grow my blog. But I am also working with someone not in the animal community to help me refine my blog. I received a lists of changes she felt should be implemented so I knew I would be in for a long night and wanted to find a healthy snack.
I walked next door to visit Target to pick up a snack for while I was giving my blog a face lift to become a little more pet friendly (check the side bars and tell me what you think). I get there and two bus loads of students walk into the store. I have been there and done that so didn't think much of it. It also didn't phase me that there were bottles of coca-cola being given out at the door. I should have grabbed one to take a picture of but since I don't drink soda anymore I figured better to not tempt myself. I figured it was some sort of promo to test the new bottle design they were handing out it looked pretty cool. I wish I had my camera to take pictures but I had left it in the room not knowing I would have such a crazy experience.
As I got inside I noticed the unusual amount of staff that was on hand to help people I mean dozen and dozens of people. There was music playing and samples of products every few aisles (well at least in the parts of the store that I walked through.) So I stopped and asked what was going on. Apparently they were having a welcome back to school event targeted at the Freshmen but it seemed there were older students there as well. It was a Georgia Tech focused event but I was told other local are students were invited to attend but buses were only leaving from Georgia Tech. I tried speaking with some of the students who were hired to work the event but was told they weren't allowed to talk to the press when I introduced myself as a blogger. I was probably not supposed to even be in the store at the time it had apparently closed early and then reopened for this event but I blended in enough that I wasn't stopped by either store security, the police, or the store personnel but they all clamped up tight when I said I was a blogger and were any covering the event. Not sure why because from what I could see the event was a huge success. The students were there shopping and having a great time with their friends the staff was happy and friendly and interacting with the students. They obviously had hired students to be there for the day to talk to their peers and hand out samples and swag and help them with their shopping experience.
When you walked into the store there were several shopping carts filled with prizes and you were supposed to text a specific code to see if you had won or gotten a percentage off of your shopping for the day. I was told that there were other social media tie ins with the samples but I honestly either wasn't interested in the samples and wasn't there to party I wanted to be in and out as quick as possible.
From what I could tell the majority of information about this event was given out via social media(Twitter and Facebook) and an on campus visit by Target Employees. The one downside is that instead of shouting about the event and inviting the media out to play they were hush, hush about it all. I did manage to find out that 50 schools across the US were participating in similar events or would be participating as their schools open for the fall session.
The event was sponsored by Target, Mars, and Proctor & Gamble I was not sponsored or compensated in any way to write this post. I was given the swag bag with all the items you see in the above picture as I walked out the door but so did the busloads of students that were still arriving and would be arriving for the next few hours.
To check out the event http://www.facebook.com/TargetCollegeEventsatGATech
PS. For those of you curious about what I got as a snack from this adventure I picked up a box of Butter Free Salt Free Microwave Popcorn.